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O BUILD A SHIP by Don erry

O BUILD A SHIP

By

Pub Date: Aug. 23rd, 1963
Publisher: king

This is in the grand tradition of the all-male novel and play where the ent up drives of a bachelor community are directed at the achievement of the near impossible and where the impossible becomes the problem of the fought over female. The She here is a ship. She is to become the trade lifeline of an isolated settlement n the Tillamook Bay area of Oregon in the 1850's. Sam Howard is a hermit shipwright and the only man in the group capable of directing the others in their improbable ask for they have only strength without knowhow. Under Sam, a ship begins to take form and one-by-one they all literally fall in love with what they are creating. When goes off his head after a glimpse of a local squaw, he first attempts to buy her from her husband. No sale. He then conspires with some outside ruffians to have the husband hung for a crime he didn't commit. Further effort on the ship is his price for cooperation and reluctantly his comrades give it -- for Her. The disturbance this causes among the Indians is only one of the implications that this examination of obsession explores. The humor is all pervasive until the mood deepens to one of tragic laughter and plays back upon itself. The incidents of the novel are largely visual and Hollywood would do well to note. A regional market (and more) for the author of Trask and Moontrap.